The Historiography of Alexander the Great

Krzysztof Nawotka, Robert Rollinger, Josef Wiesehöfer, Agnieszka Wojciechowska

• Éditeur: Harrassowitz Verlag
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783447198332
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: Greek Ancient History

This volume tries to tackle the most serious problem facing modern Alexander the Great studies: that of inadequate sources. Its principal interest is in surviving ancient continuous accounts (Diodorus, Curtius Rufus, Plutarch, Arrian, and Justin), which are at least three hundred years younger than Alexander and in many ways one-sided in their Greek bias, often promoting the view of Alexander within the narrow bounds of a Western conqueror. The papers in this volume deconstruct these accounts and search for sources used by their authors, principally in narrative of eye-witnesses and other authors of the first generation after Alexander, including his court historian Callisthenes and his companions Onesicritus, Aristobulus, and Ptolemy. They search for fragments of ancient literary works known from papyri and for shadowy accounts created on the Persian side like the "mercenaries' source". Some papers look into propaganda patterns of the age of Alexander and their connections with clichés of Egyptian literature. Some investigate a parallel tradition on the last will of Alexander, enshrined in "I Maccabees", and best known from the "Alexander Romance". Finally, papers in this volume examine post-classical rendition of Alexander: Jewish from the Talmud to Josippon and Byzantine, composed of separate textual traditions of various ancient authors, with Plutarch taking pride of place.

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title Pages
• Imprint
• Contents
• Krzysztof Nawotka, Josef Wiesehöfer and Agnieszka Wojciechowska: Historiography of Alexander the Great: An Introduction
• Pierre Briant: Alexandre à Troie: images, mythe et realia
• Kenneth R. Moore: Of Philosophers and Kings: Concerning Philip II of Macedon’s Alleged “Debt” to Plato
• Nicolas Sekunda: Patron the Phocian: a written “mercenary source”
• Reinhold Bichler: On the Traces of Onesicritus. Some Historiographical Aspects of Alexander’s Indian Campaign
• Adam Lukaszewicz: Alexander and the palace of Memnon
• Ivan Ladynin: Cleomenes of Naucratis in Pseudo-Aristotle’s Oeconomica and the topoi of the Ancient Egyptian Propaganda
• Robin Lane Fox: P.OXY. 4808 and Historians
• Gościwit Malinowski: Agatharchides of Cnidus and the idea of a Peripatetic view of Alexander
• Federicomaria Muccioli: In search of the many images of Alexander at Chaeronea. Historical and literary traditions in Plutarch’s „Corpus“
• Sabine Müller: The Miracles of Water and Oil in the Historiography on Alexander
• Giuseppe Squillace: The subtle and red line between reality and fiction: Alexander and his ‘Propaganda Machine’
• Krzysztof Nawotka : I Maccabees and the Alexander Romance
• Ory Amitay: Alexander and Caligula in the Jerusalem Temple: A Case of Conflated Traditions
• Corinne Jouanno: The Alexander historians in Byzantium
• Bibliography
• Indices